Introducing enquiry-based learning to senior academic administrators in Chinese Universities

Most Australian universities are involved in the delivery of transnational courses. Traditionally these were delivered through face-to-face instruction, usually in intensive mode. More recently advances in communications and educational technology have enabled universities to deliver part or all of these courses online. Although the use of e-learning is rapidly increasing in countries such as China, there are major challenges in adapting English e-learning programs to the Chinese context. These challenges are more linguistic and cultural than technological. It is far easier for Western academics to justify the use of traditional delivery methods by insisting that this is the preferred learning style of people from Confusion Heritage Cultures than to challenge the ability of Chinese learners to adapt to an e-learning environment. This paper describes the results of accepting such a challenge